BC Liberals Outpacing NDP in Candidate Nominations

Prince George, B.C. – When it comes to nominating candidates, the BC Liberals are way ahead of the opposition NDP.

The Liberals have around 75% of their candidates in place for next May’s provincial election while the NDP has just 16.

All of this as the BC Liberals converge on the Westin Bayshore for their party convention this weekend.

The big question is, does it matter?

“It’s probably never too early to nominate a candidate if you’ve got some high-profile ones in the wings,” says UNBC political science lecturer Jason Morris.

“I think it’s fair to take having a lot of candidates being ready-to-go early as a measure of election readiness even though this is early November and we’re looking at May 9th next year for voting.”

Should it have New Democrat supporters concerned, including those in Prince George where no candidates have announced publicly a run for one of two nominations?

“It’s always hard to say what’s going on behind the scenes at the constituency association level and my guess is that there aren’t too many New Democratic party members locally who are too worried about that,” he says.

“I imagine they would start rolling up their sleeves for candidate selection early in the new year. If they don’t get started on that by then, then that’s an indication that the constituency associations are rather moribund.”

As for this weekend’s convention, he says it’s more of a chance for the BC Liberals to rally the troops more than anything else.

“BC Liberal conventions tend to be more about networking and socializing and election readiness, instead of the nitty gritty, hard work that many other parties do in terms of hashing out and debating and arguing about directions and policy,” says Morris.

“That’s something that’s more akin to opposition parties having to do and the BC Liberals are essentially just trying to maintain their game and not worry about losing any ground and playing it safe.

“We can look at the agenda of the conference and see it’s mostly get-togethers and dinners and speakers and not a whole lot of presenting of research and journal articles and social science statistics of what to do next.”

The Liberal convention is taking place in Vancouver and starts shortly after noon on Friday, and wraps on Sunday morning with the Premier delivering a keynote address.

Comments

Posted on Thursday, November 3, 2016 @ 7:16 AM by He spoke with a score of 0

hmmm, the reporting seems not to be non-partisan. but extremely slanted to belittling a party that is ready to go to election.

So, the BC NDP has only 16 people set up, and it is 6 months away. Do you really want a party that can not even organize themselves to run our province again.

Posted on Thursday, November 3, 2016 @ 9:48 AM by Fate with a score of 0

How many people do you think run the BCLibs and the province? Bernier is a perfect example, he might be the minister of education but he doesn’t actually make any decisions, he does exactly what the Premier and her inner circle tell him.

Posted on Thursday, November 3, 2016 @ 9:52 AM by ohreally with a score of 0

My big question is!!! Who are the NDP today! Not a clue who anyone is, don’t even know who the leader is. Fine position to be in preparing for an election!

Posted on Thursday, November 3, 2016 @ 4:51 PM by Steve Cooley with a score of 0

Pet peeve – misleading numbers. How does 75% relate to 16? (Hint, it does not. One is a raw number and the other is a ratio.)

Posted on Thursday, November 3, 2016 @ 11:00 PM by Eagleone with a score of 0

The NDP usually pick their candidates by identity politics, rather than the quality of candidate, so I don’t expect them to fill their nominations until they have an idea of what identities they need to shore up and then parachute the ‘appropriate’ candidate into place. This is why they are the opposition.